Today I’m thinking about Jesus’ Parable of the Lost Son (usually referred to as
the Parable of the Prodigal Son – but I prefer to keep the flow of the Lost Things
in this parable – Lost Sheep (Luke 15: 4 – 7), Lost Coin (15: 8 – 10), Lost Son
(15: 11 - 32), and I am struck by how unreliable both sons are when they describe their
circumstances.

The younger son, after blowing through his inheritance, finds himself working
on a pig farm. He says, “…here I am dying of hunger.” (15: 17) Now, yes, there
was a famine in that country, and times were hard, but he was working,
presumably being paid. Considering his pampered life of comfort and ease, I
doubt that this callow boy had any previous experience with hunger or work. I
read his complaint with a measure of distrust – not outright disbelief, I’m
sure he was hungry, and tired, and sore, and dismal. But I doubt his claim of
starvation.

And the elder son is not much better. He first claims that he has “slaved” for his father for many years
and “never once disobeyed any orders.” (15: 29)
I suspect that his slavery is a whining exaggeration and his claim of
perfect obedience is not perfectly true. He then goes on to say that despite
all of this his father has “never offered [him] so much as a kid for [him] to
celebrate with [his] friends.” (15: 29) And this, too, I disbelieve. The father
in this story is prodigal – giving money and resources extravagantly,
wastefully even. I cannot believe that this
lavishly giving man, would have never
given his son anything.

Perhaps we should call this story the Parable of the Unreliable Narrators…

Sunday, February 28, 2016

It wouldn’t be anything new or revelatory or shocking to tell you that Jesus
often taught the people and his disciples using parables. In fact, we are told
that Jesus “would never speak to [the crowds] except in parables.” (Matthew 13:
34/ Mark 4:34 NJB). Many of us have been told about Jesus and his parables
since we were children; we have them memorized; we have our favorites. We’ve
sung songs and hymns based on the parables. We’ve seen them portrayed in skits,
rendered in paintings, stained in glass windows, and filmed for the movie screen.

We know the parable of the sower, and the darnel (though we
may know it more familiarly as the parable of the wheat and tares.) We know the
parable of the mustard seed and yeast. We know the parable of the wicked
tenants, the parable of the lamp, the lost coin; we know the parable of the
prodigal son.

But, as familiar, as they have become to us over the years,
perhaps it is still possible to be surprised by the parables. They really are
intended to surprise, to catch the listener off guard with an eternal truth
wrapped within a pleasantly told tale. Perhaps it’s time to be surprised by the
parables again. Would you be surprised to discover that there are no parables
in the Gospel of John?[i]
There’s a lot of teaching going on in John’s gospel, but none of it is via the
parable path. The parables that we know and love are all found in the three
synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Some of the parable were told to deliberately obfuscate; some of the parables
were riddles told with the intent to confuse, told so that they may not
understand.

“Then the disciples went up to him and asked, ‘why do you talk to [the crowds]
in parables?’ In answer, he said, ‘Because to you is granted to understand the
mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not granted. Anyone who
has will be given more and will have more than enough; but anyone who has not will
be deprived even of what he has. The reason I talk to them in parables is that
they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. So in
their case what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah is being fulfilled:

Listen and listen, but never understand!
Look and look, but never perceive!
This people’s heart has grown coarse,
their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes tight
to avoid using their eyes to see, their ears to hear,
their heart to understand,
changing their ways and being healed by me.’”
(Matthew 13: 10 – 17 NJB)

It may strike us as strange, but sometimes Jesus did not speak clearly.
Sometimes his message was hidden inside a riddle. One of my homiletics
instructors frequently reminded us to “put the good stuff on the bottom shelf
so people can reach it.” But Jesus didn’t always do this. Sometimes he made his
teaching difficult to understand.

This isn’t to say that he was always difficult, or that his message was
consistently obscure, or that he never explained, or that Jesus cannot be
understood. Jesus did sometimes, when pressed, explain the riddles; Jesus did,
on occasion, explain the parables. But not often. Between the few that he
explained and the ones told to deliberately complicate, there are a great many
of Jesus’ parables that are simply told without explanation. They are left for
the audience (whether the original aural audience, or us today as a reading
audience) to interpret. These parables are told without a key, without a guide.
And the audience is expected to work through them, without help, to find their
meaning and application.

Our text for today is one of these unexplained parables. Neither Jesus, nor the
author of the gospel has provided us with a key to the parable. And, what is
more, it is an open ended parable. It has a beginning, a middle – but no
definitive ending. It is up to us to provide the ending (provide the
endings-plural?) and the interpretation.

In Luke 13: 6 – 9 we read:

He told this parable, ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he
came looking for fruit on it but found none. He said to his vinedresser, “for
three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and
finding none. Cut it down: why should it be taking up the ground?” “Sir,” the
man replied, “leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and
manure it: it may bear fruit net year; if not, then you can cut it down.”’
(Luke 13: 6 – 9 NJB)

This parable comes in a lengthy section of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus has been
speaking to a large crowd since the beginning of chapter 12. He has been teaching them with plain
instruction and ethical commands as well as with parables. And in this
particular parable he used a set of stock images familiar to his audience.

The image of the vineyard and its owner had been used repeatedly in their religious
history, going back to the prophets. The vineyard was readily understood as an
image of the nation of Israel, as was the fig tree. And they recognized God as
the owner of the vineyard.

We could get hung up on identifying the vine-dresser, or the three year period
within this story (many commentaries suggest that this equates to the three
year ministry of Jesus, but this isn’t necessary.

He tells the story but doesn’t end it. So let’s try out a
few possible endings:

Ending 1
Then the owner answered the gardener, “Do as you have said.” And the gardener lavished great care on the
fig tree for a year - watering it, fertilizing the ground, carefully pruning
it, but at the end of the year there were still no figs. The man returned and said, “Dig it up and
throw it into the fire. And let the ground be given to another that will bear
fruit.”

This may be the most obvious ending, and is fitting with the context of the
preceding chapter wherein Jesus speaks of imminent judgement, but it is not, by
any means, the only possible ending. Shall we consider a few more
possibilities?

Ending 2
Then the owner answered the gardener, “Do as you have said.” And the vinedresser lavished great care on
the fig tree for year – watering it, fertilizing the ground, carefully pruning
it, but at the end of the year there were still no figs. The owner returned and said, “Give it another
year. There still may be hope for this
tree.”

If Moses could repeatedly argue with God to spare the people of Israel, and if
Abraham could bargain with God for the people of Sodom, it could be that the
vinedresser (who is he?) can plead on our behalf to the owner of the vineyard.
It could be…

Ending 3
Then the man answered the gardener, “No.
This tree will not produce any fruit here. Dig it up and move it elsewhere. Perhaps it
will do better on the other side of the garden.”

Perhaps a change is necessary. Perhaps something new is needed…

Ending 4
Then the man answered the gardener, “No.
This tree will never produce any fruit. Cut it down. But sell the timber to the carpenter. There is still use in this tree even in its
unfruitfulness.”

Grace even in judgement? Perhaps.

Ending 5
Then the owner answered the gardener, “Do as you have said.” And the gardener
lavished great care on the fig tree and, over the course of the next year it
produced more fruit than any other tree in the garden.

It’s possible, the big Hollywood ending. Maybe it’s not entirely plausible,
maybe it’s not the most realistic, but it is, I suppose, possible.

Ending 6
Then the owner answered the gardener, “Do as you have said.” And the gardener
lavished great care on the fig tree and, over the course of the next year it
began to produce fruit -not as much as the other trees, but still more than
nothing and the owner was satisfied.

Ending 7
Then the man answered the gardener, “Do as you have said.” And the gardener lavished great care on the
fig tree for a year – watering it, fertilizing the ground, carefully pruning
it, but shortly before the end of the year the tree was struck by lighting and
burned to the ground.

Hey – the future is uncertain. Open ended and uncertain. Disasters can and do
happen, and we don’t know what time we have left.

There could be many more endings, different potential
outcomes to this story. The parable is open ended, just like the future. It is
up to us to think about this parable, to find its ending, to interpret its
meaning and application. What will we do? What will we change? How will we
live? How do we read this parable?

For reasons still unknown to myself, I have been neglecting to share a weekly free background image so far this year. I apologize. Here is this week's free background image. It's yours to use as you will-at home, work, school, church, wherever. I only ask that you share it freely and that you tell others that you found it here.

This week's image, for those who may be interested in such details, was created by photographing, at very close range, a green glass vase positioned directly over a light.

I've just finished reading the short book, How to Pray When You're Pissed at God (or anyone else for that matter) by Ian Punnett.

It's not what I would call a great book. But it is a good book. And while I think he overstates the scientific and psychological aspects of his claims, I don't disagree with him. It is perfectly acceptable to be pissed with God - biblical even.

I may not think it a great book (it's more of a devotional book, and I don't usually like devotional books), but I really like the following:

AN ANGRY PRAYER FOR A VICTIM OF LIES

Vindicate me, O God, and plead my causeagainst those who are spreading rumors about me;rescue me from the deceitful and the wickedwho are strangling me with their lies.i cry to you that I might be understood;I ask you to bridge the gap between who you know I amand what people are saying about me.Please bring me home.

Those who were once my friends are content to make me miserable,and you, O God, seem content to let this happen!You are God, my stronghold. Will you reject me too?Must I endure this oppression alone?

Send forth your light and your truth;let them guide me;let them bring me to your holy mountain,to the place where you dwell,so that I may feel that somebody understands me.Tell me the words to sayto cut through the walls of lies that are imprisoning me.Then will I go to the altar of God,to God, my joy and my delight,I will praise you with music,O God, my God.

I tell my lonely soul, put your hope in the light and the truth of the Lord!For I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.Amen. (Punnett 79)

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Friday, February 26, 2016

I found this snake skin in Nebraska a couple of years ago. It is, I think, a North American Racer - Coluber constrictor - they're non-venomous constrictors that eat insect, small rodents and birds, and bird eggs.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Now is the time to sing and speak about latter-day wars worse than civil, about
a time when many will depart from faith and dust will fall, when seducing
spirits on FalseNews will promulgate a doctrine of demons and, speaking lies,
will convince an imperial people to turn a victorious right hand against their
own vitals, searing them with a hot iron.

Now is the time; the future is here. The future is strange. Fortune tellers,
witches, pundits, soothsayers, tea-leaf readers, poets, occultists, and
sorcerers are shaking the one solid earth, just as the Bible prophesied. It is
the war of the latter years and latter days. But what madness is this? What
fierce orgy of self-slaughter and burning diesel fuel? Originally astrology and
horoscope readings were only done while the ghost of Crassus still wandered
with us, but now every proud Babylonian priest and political candidate is
consulting the oracles. Tell us what the polls reveal. What do the entrance and
exit spirits declare for us today?

The stars in the burning South are swept from the sky but, even so, Astrology
has grown. The Chinese might once have passed under our yoke (and still might
if the Trumpet blows). Voodoo is back in black magic; witchcraft spreads in
cities where houses are half demolished, and walls totter. We have seen mediums
and mystics, magnesium fires and experimental weapons and a race of giants corrupting
us with wicked imaginations.

Still, if Fate could find no other way to bring the Advent of a Neo-Nero (for
everlasting kingdoms cost the gods dear, and advertising is expensive) it will
have been worth it. The news media gives
widespread publicity to the self-proclaimed satanic candidate, given him
everything but a nude woman altar. This is the man who calls himself the First
Priest of Narcissism, the epitome of ugly American passion, and free
indulgence.

How did the fire begin? How did the diesel fuel ignite? Was there other
flammable material that we were content to ignore?

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Bishop Benedetto called me, “We need your help
again.” I recognized his voice, that odd
combination of saccharine vowels and cigarette rasp. The Bishop had called on
me and my investigatory services on several previous occasions. The last case I
worked for Bishop Benedetto resulted in my arrest and a rather severe beating.
Benedetto secured my release, quietly-eventually, and the church paid me for my
services, but never apologized, never publicly retracted the accusations. I’d sworn
not to answer any more calls from the Bishop, but I needed the money. Desperation
makes liars of us all.

“Are you there?” he said when I didn’t respond immediately. “Did you hear me?
We need your help.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said resignedly. “But I don’t know that I should be. Not after
the last time.”

“Yes, well, we wouldn’t call upon your services again, either, except for this.
It’s terrible. He’s been dead for fifty years and they still can’t leave him
alone. It’s a desecration. You must help. The church will pay you, of course,
handsomely, but you must help us. Please. You must help. ”

I hated to hear him beg in that croaky voice. “Bishop,
please, take another Valda tablet and tell me what’s going on.”

“Someone has stolen the hands of Padre Pio.”

“Is that someone I should know?”

“Someone you should know?” the Bishop huffed through the phone. “Pio of
Pietrelcina, friar, priest, mystic, stigmatist, and the venerated patron saint
of January blues…does that sound like someone you should know? His feast day is
celebrated on the 23rd of September with…”

“September 23rd,” I interrupted, “that’s my birthday. Quite the
coincidence. I’m touched. And you say someone has stolen his hands?” Bishop
Benedetto sputtered and fumed at the other end of the phone line. I knew, of
course, all about Padre Pio and his bloody stigmata. I just wanted to mess with
the Bishop.

And, besides, I don’t really go in for that mystic stuff. Talk to birds and
angels, to trees and bees, but don’t talk to me about all that supernatural phenomena:
magic, astrology, blitzkrieg bops, psychic healing, UFOs, and black steam… Inspired
artist and mad scientist imagination are too much for me. I am the Never Wizard.
Give me silver halide brilliant enough to fade away and I’ll solve your case.
But silver particle physics, and silver mysteries and the host of related uncertainties
have no traction with my simple mind.

I let the Bishop sputter on for quite some time before taking the details of
the case from him. The hands of the beatified and sainted Padre Pio were
secretly amputated after his death in 1968. He had, in life, often told people
that, "After my death I will do more. My real mission will begin after my
death." And, if Bishop Benedetto is to be believed, this proved true.
Though the rest of Pio’s body was interred in an undisclosed crypt, his stigmatized
hands were spirited away and put into a special reliquary. A secret order of
mystic priests carried the box in their protection, walking the earth, meeting
the faithful, getting into all sorts of outlandish adventures, and using the
hands to bring about miraculous cures and deliverance around the world. They
travelled covertly, never advertising their work, never drawing attention to
themselves or their sacred charge.

But someone had found them and, in the dead of night, killed them and stolen the
hands of Padre Pio. Many religious factions have a long and sordid history of
relic theft. It’s considered a necessary ethical abomination so they’ve devised
all sorts of justifications. Never mind the tortured leaps of logic required. Furta Sacra is big business, even today.
But don’t try telling that to the good Bishop Benedetto. “There is no way out
of here without them,” rasped the Bishop.
“It will be dark soon. There is no way out.”

God knows, the master would not approve; the whole thing’s been mishandled, but
I did what I could. According to Benedetto, the Secret Priests of the Bleeding
Hands of Fate had been attacked and killed in an abandoned warehouse down by
the docks. Of course they were! Where else would something like this have occurred?
All the ancient goblins and warlords are drawn to abandoned warehouses down by
the docks. Manos! Gods of primal darkness, the hands of fate doomed these men.
But I would do what I could.

It is the transverberation of the soul; he is
attacked from within by flaming seraphs that pierce his poison heart with fierce
darts, and eave him wounded. But still he walks on, walks right out of this
world. He feels the breath of God in a particle accelerator, the breath of life
in quantum equations. He is alive once more, and gasping for breath, and then
he is gone. Psychoanalyze the cross mind out of view of punctuated beauty. The pain
is immediate, blood and mind tripped, ripping from here and how to distant time
and place unbearable – the suicide of the world - drive an invisible spike through
wrist and foot.

I swung my flashlight back and forth across the empty expanse. Teenagers and
hoods, derelicts and vagrants sometimes used these buildings but, unlike movie
screen detectives, I never carried a firearm. Never needed a handgun. I didn’t
see any criminals skulking about, with or without cloaks and hoodies. But
there, in a heap, just as the Bishop had said, were the bodies of the Secret
Priests of the Bleeding Hands of Fate, their corpses still dressed in cassocks
of black wool and crimson silk left in a heap. The police hadn’t responded yet.
No crime scene barricades, no human shaped tape outlines on the floor. How had
Benedetto known? What was I getting myself into?

And there in the darkness of the warehouse with the sound of waves on the wharves
beyond, I began to smell a miraculous fragrance. Was I beginning to hallucinate
the healing powers of the supposed saint? Was I being handed a hex? Heading
into hysteria? Headaches and heart guilt, unconscious at the altar, I did not
believe. But that is when I heard the approaching police sirens and saw the
flashing cherry lights through the warehouse windows. “Damn!” The Bishop had
set me up again.

The cops outside set up with their high powered search lights, the brilliant
lights of the long-deceased. They thought I was trapped. But I am clever. I am quick. A hatchway in the floor
lead down to the cold water below. I had only a few moments to make my escape.
I opened the trap door, then pulled one of the dead priests and propped his
body over the hatch so it would shut with him on top of it as I closed it. I
knew they’d find it before too long, but every second counts when you’re on the
run from the police and from the momentous consequence of a solar eclipse. I
dropped down into the water and swam for an hour or more before crawling up on
an empty beach on the south side of town. From there I caught a bus back home.

In my office apartment I shrugged off my wet clothes and listened to the messages
on my answering machine. “Where are you?” it was the Bishop again. God, how I
hated him and his dying luck hoaxes and his lying duck voice. “I thought you
were going to handle this thing quietly! Now the police are involved and asking
questions. Where are you? Call me!” I deleted the message and took a long hot
shower.

Monday, February 22, 2016

A friend of mine has a book in the works concerning various aspects of theology, incarnational ministry, community, and disaster work. He keeps on his desk a broken cinder block that he found in the ruins of a building after a tornado in Canton, Illinois, July 23, 1975 . He keeps it as a reminder and as a prompt.

In preparation for his book, which is nearing completion, he asked me if I might have something poetical that I could contribute as a sort of preface to the work. Knowing his fondness for haiku I sat down to write something for him that would combine the concrete image (pun intended) with a scriptural theme. I wrote two variations which I've sent to him. Whether or not he uses either one, or the other, or both...

After late-night television the fires begin; the
city is ablaze, raging infernos. There are conflicting reports on the radio. Some say it was a downed aircraft, a black-winged helicopter, a secret test
plane, an unidentified fleeing object. But what was it fleeing? Others say it was a comet, a bolide, a stray meteorite, some cosmic renegade. And still
others report it as an explosion at the munitions factory or the state owned
pig farm. In the air is a billowing cloud of smoke and particulates lit by
Illuminati searchlights, those enormous, parabolic, aluminized reflector lights which are programmed to swing and flash in sequence in the night skies.

This is the turning point, the stationary point. This is the inflection point on the
curve of history. But there is not one questioned statement- a zero view. There
are only classified protestations and blind prejudices identified as a storm of
natural occurrence. But these are not merely the aural and visual
hallucinations of a deviant personality.

I oppose-they say. I lack compassion and judgment-they say. I am lost. They
say. Stigmatized and negative. Conflicting reports. I am an unbeliever-they
say. And I am unbelieved.

Through the smoke, grit and glitter sparkle in the reflected
light of midnight search lights. If not for the explosions, and sirens, and
gunfire, and screams in the street below me this would be almost magical.
Thaumaturgic, even. A marvel. A miracle. And another explosion, closer now, at
the armory. A string of percussive claps, each louder than the last, throwing
ash and paperwork into the air. The building shakes beneath me.

What is the real spiritual agenda
here? What is the agent’s name? Who is assigned to this investigation?

This is NOWHERE, but not a Utopia, and not a Good-Place. Not at all. A very parable
of cities on fire, like all the others. There is a pattern at work here, a
pattern of spiritual and cultural destruction. They want to destroy us. I know how crazy this sounds, but my paranoia
is the result of a culture of lawlessness created by untouchables: “Touch Not
the Lord’s Anointed! And Do My Profits No Harm!”

Imagine the looks of horror and streams of water, shock, anger, and tears above
the roar of the flames. Mark the moment. Strike the page. Burn it down. The Sad
Eyed Belle Dame sans Merci does not appear to me this time. She brings no
comfort; she brings me no word of stern rebuke. The wind changes directions and the
smoke is blowing towards me. There are police and news helicopters overhead.

The Federal Government is a good and righteous force, when properly staffed, approved
by all the churches of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (but the Book of
Revelations is not in there. I’ve got some stuff underlined in a friend’s
obituary.) And for this reason, we take it as our model and our theme. Unfortunately
the universities have not coupled with those dedicated and desiccated pro-fascists
factions that eventually went for George Bush (H or W). Now we need to
demonstrate how Political Correctness can be rebranded, rebuilt, repurposed.
And all that is necessary for our success in this is that Church Doctors (with
degrees from Oral Roberts University!) should stand on the backbone platforms
of our enemies. Finish him!

The president has picked his own ultra-radicals
for orifices. Give us a new America; there’s some serious money in that stuff.
On the surface, this is a good idea, but don’t look too deep (diarrhea).
Christians lose, they quit. They’re quitters. The situation is much the same in
the hypothetical (hypocritical endothermic histrionic) gubernatorial race –
turning to more piratical games wherever PERSONAL COMPUTERS have broken out like
a rash. Science, history, and precedent are easily swung from state to state
for Demon-crat numbers. “There will be nothing, and there is nothing for campus
leftists or the legions (I AM LEGION) of slavish (Slavic) bureaucrats.

Contrary to the calumnies of our opponents, bloody street fighters in a summer
blast furnace, we take the words at face value, determining how to read them according
to the historical fixations of our party. We will solve all of our problems
with broad brush census data. Insurance or not. A principled administration of
whip cracking men and women, bleary-eyed, blurry-eyed, Judeo-Christians with
respect for favored citizens and tolerance for approved positions.

Faith in the system. Always submit to the Church Administration.
This is your salvation. This is not to be doubted- God has laid down a
universal rule for our misconduct namely, that to everyone placed in authority over
us by his appointment, we should render reverence, obedience, gratitude, and
all the other services in our power (unless he’s a Demon-crat, obviously). Nor
does it make any difference whether they are worthy of this honour or not.

All 435 members of Congress and 34 Senators will
face the voters. We now have 900,000 members and supporters in 872 chapters in
all 50 states! The tide is turning, the worm is churning. We pray for victory.

I bought these flowers for my wife for Valentines day-however, the cat believes that any flowers or plants kept in the house are his own private buffet. He eats them. Always. I am forced to photograph the flowers quickly, before he can complete devastate them. He has already clipped down seven of the flowering stalks.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Friday, February 12, 2016

I began with a question. It was a simple question,
nothing that should have led to trouble. As my uncle used to say, ‘Don’t start
trouble; there won’t be trouble.’ If she’d followed my uncle’s maxim, she’d
still be here, wouldn’t she? I began with the question: “Just what do these
lightnings and thunders signify? What are the atmospheric voices saying?”

“It’s the anarchists, sir,” she said. “Anarchists taking to arms, suddenly,
within our ranks and in our pews.” She held out a sheaf of reports and files
that I chose to ignore.

I said, “What do you mean?”

She said, “We have become so warped, so wrapped up in a theological manhunt, a
witch-hunt to discredit and divorce our own, that we have come close – very close
– to forcing Congress to approve their application for refugee status. We
cannot prosecute them for possible future thought crimes. There’s no way to do
it.”

“We may not be able to prosecute them, “ I said, “with the legal system as tied
up as it is with the blood struggle, but we can…no. We must…ask for these
serpents with beguiling human heads to be stricken from the Book of One. The
Throne is there, and the Voices and Thunders have approved our budgetary
requests. Our credit with headquarters has never been better. So why is this so
difficult?” I fumed.

“Because they haven…”

I interrupted her, unwilling to let her continue even a half-hearted defense on
behalf of our enemies. “The drunken drum
beat of bad news,” I hissed at her as I stared out the floor to ceiling glass
windows of my towering downtown office, “will not be silenced without action
from the ruptured saints. Old and New. We talk about morality, and we talk
about error; we read about it in the newspaper. But we must begin to take more
stringent action. There is no doubt that both the worm and the tide have
turned. Now we will drive them out; all that is required is that we act,
without hesitation and without mercy. Cut
fast. Cut deep. This much is clear.

I paused, but not for long enough to allow her to speak. “I will personally pile
a crisis of unimagination upon the friendly liberals who are causing our
problems. With weapons, and gas-masks, and an organized army, if that’s what it
takes to cast them into the lake of fire, with anger.”

“Oh,” I continued, gesticulating with my arms in frenzied motions through the
space around her head, “They have a sort of power, power to form a high-altitude,
high-minded attitude. They claim, without warrant, the same victor’s crown that
we wear – but we are not powerless. Our religion is power, and we are not
powerless. Their attitude is one of intellectual conceit; with their questions,
and their study, and their so-called science. But we have lightnings. Yes.
Lightnings and regulations. And we have judgment. And so, we will take
proactive steps to clear-cut them from the pews. Slash and burn them from our
rolls.”

“But, Sir…” she whined. I sent her a withering look and she retreated.

“Are you one of them? Have you adopted their sensibilities?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you been caught up in smoke, captured in mist, lost in the fog of their delusions?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you loyal?”

“…yes. … Yes, sir.”

“Completely, unquestioningly loyal? There are a lot of traitors these days.
Benedict Arnold has sown his spores and multiplied a harvest of fungal
infections. They are selling our secrets, airing our dirty laundry, revealing
our nakedness. Are you certain of your place in this institution?”

“Sir?”

“Are you ours? Body and soul?”

“Yes, sir. Yes.”

I did not believe her, so I tossed her through the floor to ceiling glass
windows of my towering downtown office.

Aries –
A rude missile fired through the skull, and sooner or later there will be no
way out. A history of violent, irrational behavior is not an excuse for
irrational, violent behavior. We can treat this with psychotropic pharmaceuticals,
but you may not like the side effects, or the side affects.

Taurus
– A mountain moving up to the stars, a mountain moving into position. It is the
right thing to do. It is the tactical thing to do. Unlock the door and let
these things move into place

Gemini
– It is not a statement. It is not an accusation. It is a question. Can I say
someth… Can I say something? Just let m… if you’ll let me… You… All right, all right… Are you listen…
are you listening to me? Please… Okay, then. Okay. We’ll try again later.

Cancer
– Stabilize critical elements. Satirize the non-responsive. Ignore all previous
history and never step into the same river twice. Sanitize the paperwork. Keep
watching the stairs.

Leo – Usually
10 microns is only a small distance to cross. Your journey, however, will take
much longer than expected. Zeno may have been right, after all: it is better to
be the tortoise than the famous, vainglorious warrior.

Virgo –
I hear the dogs barking three states over. You have heard them too. I know that
you have. But they are not there. They are not barking. I know this and you
know this, but we hear them, don’t we?

Libra –
You go out and then you come back. Where you go you go. You will return. Take
earwax, and fingernail clippings, locks of hair and navel lint, and skin
scrapings. Travel light. The only other necessary thing is a flashlight.

Scorpio
– A confession can be misleading. An apology may be a defense. Watch for
candles and caution tape. Take headache powder.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

I heard it long before I saw it – which is strange, the laws
of physics being what they are. The disaster, the bad star. We heard its thrum
in the night before we ever saw its strange, amber-colored light. No one has
yet offered up a plausible explanation for why its sound waves traveled faster
than light. Is it wrinkled space, tesseracted four dimensional shapes, rapidly spinning
magnetic fields? Binary forces acting on unstable pulsars? Random deviations
from the galactic mean?

The applications of perfectly coiled wires, will convert the
earth into an enormous brain, a thinking computer of vast knowledge, into rhythmic
particles dancing in synchronicity with the universe. We have communication at
a distance. We have television and telephony, telekinesis and telepathy. Whether
we are face to face or at a thousand miles, from across the vastness of space
or the house next door.

It was February and I was in bed next to my wife, reading a
heavy book of modern Russian literature; she was sleeping. Snoring. When she
got loud I’d nudge her with my foot until she rolled over and began to breathe
easier. Our teenage children were sleeping in rooms across the hall. They didn’t
seem to notice either their mother’s snoring or the howling wind outside, or the
thrumming disaster.

I could hear the wind. Winter’s here are always cold and windy, and I knew that
in the morning I’d be shoveling drifts of snow from the door and the driveway,
but, for now, I was warm, in bed comfortably reading of Viktor and Lyudmila.

A disheveled, distracted man walks alongside the concrete
sidewalk, not noticing the puddles or the garbage piled up at the curb. It is
dark, but he walks without looking where is going, and without stumbling over
the potholes and cracks in the pavement. His hair is uncombed, his shirt
untucked. One shoe is untied. He smokes
a cigarette, takes the final drag, and exhales. The smoke drifts upward,
causing the neon-lights above him to shimmer momentarily as it passes. The
glowing ember of his cigarette goes out as it reaches the filter, but he does
not notice this for several blocks. When he finally realizes that his cigarette
is out, he snatches it from between his lips and flicks it away.

This is indeterminate, geometrical property of a demonic
binding ritual. And these are the hallucinations of pubescent girls. Every day
is danger, and every Night even more so. These streets are filled with vermin
and vice, the alleys with strangers and an electromechanical device.

Only gradually did I begin to notice the vibrations in the
air – the vibrations behind the sound of the wind and beyond the occasional
noise from the nearby interstate highway. It was an electrical sound, constant
and warm, steady. I closed the book over my right index finger to keep my
place, looked up towards the window – as if I could see through the drawn
curtain into the darkness beyond, as if I could, by concentration and focus,
see the very sound itself, growing in the air. There was a sizzle and two short
spats just before the lamp on the bedside table went out; the bulb exploded. My
wife sat up. “What was that?”

He pats his rumpled coat pockets, searching for the pack of
smokes he had on him earlier, but before he finds it, he realizes that it’s not
the cigarettes he can’t find: he himself is lost. He does not recognize this neighborhood
or this street. Demeter Street? Where the hell is that? Where am I? He looks up
and down the block at the shops and stores dimly illuminated by the flickering
street lamp. Olsons’ Television Repair. Dominico Star! (whatever that is…) Ye
Olde Wig Shoppe. A Deflated Doll’R store… None of this is familiar to him. Only
one car is parked on the street – a broken down foreign car, one of those
Korean jobs that were popular 10-15 years ago. Brown. A broken-down, ugly old,
brown car, propped up on cinder blocks, its tires stolen, and stripped of
chrome.

The man jumps, his heart thuds to a halt, as a voice speaks to him from
somewhere the darkness. “Back again? What? Old man…” A woman’s voice, husky.
Dry.

Die Hand die Verletzt – “the hand that wounds” is in the
card catalogue along with: The History of
Witches and Stitches in American Kitchens. Call up the devil; study the Occult
influence of distant stars on our children. Something is here, but I don’t know
what it is. I could not say, even if I wanted to. I am bound to silence.

The Disaster is coming, the bad star, with falling fish and
bald men in chanting robes, the choirs of the damned singing the song of that blasted,
distant star. It may already be too late for us; we are too far gone. The stars
are falling. The star is fallen. Babylon the Great is fallen and we have fallen
into the void with her.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“Every night with you, what? Every night with the questions: Where am I? Who
are you? What? What?” She laughs, and it sounds like corn stalks in the wind. “You
got any more of them smokes, old dad? What?”

Monday, February 8, 2016

I don’t usually make a reading list for the year. I read
voraciously in many directions as my interests and needs take me. I read
history, and theology, philosophy, and science, a little biography and fiction –
mostly science fiction, fantasy and horror. But I don’t usually make a list
ahead of time.

This year, however, I’ve decided to do something. I’m going to clean out my ‘to-read’
list, I’m going to commit myself to reading those books that have been
lingering at the periphery of my mind. Books that I’ve wanted to read (or
re-read) but, for one reason or another, have pushed aside for other books. Also
in this list are several books that I’ve recently received as gifts from
friends and family.

As much as it pains me, I’m going to try to stick to only the books in this
list. So I’m going to avoid the bookstores. (AHHHHH! I’m hurting already.) And I’m
going to avoid the library – except for movies and music

I usually set a goal of reading 100 books a year. It’s a big goal, and I don’t
usually make it. I come close. But the one hundred isn’t really the important aspect.
My self-imposed list will get me about halfway there if I can stick to it. As
the preacher said: “People never stop writing books, (Ecclesiastes 12:12)” and
I know I’ll never get to them all, not even to all the good ones. But these are the ones I’m going to read this
year.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

The man stands shirtless in an empty apartment. He tightens the
belt around his waist and screams, “What about the tomatoes? Tomatoes!” His
neighbors pounds on the wall and yell at him to be quiet, but if this is like
any of the previous shouting episodes, he’ll continue shouting random questions
and strange obscenities until nearly midnight.

He wears copy machine toner around his eyes- like eye shadow.

The black man stands atop the cliff overlooking the ocean. Out there, on the water,
a large cargo barge heads slowly towards the setting sun. He grabs my lapels
and shakes me. “I hope you know that we’re the only four people in the country
who know anything about that music. You must get me that score!”

And blast out witches you can talk about in your kitchen.

A German soldier with his rifle drawn and ready, stands silhouetted in the
doorway. Lightning flashes. “Now is ze time to radically lower your power
vectors, Herr Carter. Ve vill judge you by our general impressions; ve have no
need for substantiated evidence.”

I am coughing, kneeling over the floor. I’ve got the hurricane cough. You and I
got pretty deep in our letters and conversations once, but it’s been years
since we talked. I am coughing like one of the dogs, like one of the canaille.

Go to volcano, immediately, go. See if he has unleashed it again. This is the
land of the freak and the home of the bereaved. There are no more conventicles.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

In the last month I’ve been reading quite a bit about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
party. First I read the massive two
volume biography of Hitler by Ian Kershaw (Hitler: 1889 – 1936 Hubris / Hitler:
1937 – 1945 Nemesis) and I’ve just finished Hitler’s own autobiographical and
philosophical ramblings, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). And I’ve given it-a very qualified- four out of five stars.

I began this reading for two reasons: 1) I’ve joined the local community theater group for a production of Mel Brooks’ comedic musical The Producers; I’ll be playing the part of Franz Liebkind, a devoted follower of “our beloved führer (Producers Act 1 Scene 6).” It’s a broad role intended to be played for scenery chewing and laughs rather than intellectual examination but I wanted, for my own benefit, to know something more about Franz’s hero: Adolf Elizabeth Hitler (Producers Act 1 Scene 6). That’s one of the jokes in the show. In fact, Adolf does not seem to have been given a middle name.)

And 2) in our highly charged, politically polarized times comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis are both too frequent and usually inaccurate. I’ve been reading this material so that I can help to stem the tide of baseless Hitler comparisons (probably an unrealistic expectation, I know, more improbable than King Canute commanding the tide waters to halt…) and so I can, where it is legitimate and accurate, make helpful and realistic comparisons to and contrasts with Hitler and the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the National Socialist German Worker’s Party - commonly known as the Nazi party).

And now, having trudged through Hitler’s 688 page screed (as
translated by Ralph Manheim) all I can say is “ugh!” And yet I am giving it 4 of 5 stars-a very
qualified 4 stars.

That rating is not given for the quality of writing. Hitler’s prose is, even
keeping in mind the German tendency for lengthy, ponderous, even labyrinthine sentences
(Manheim xiii), tedious and vague. He isn’t concerned with providing details or
specifics, just fury and rage. There is no orderly progression in Mein Kampf, even if it does, loosely,
follow the events of his life, from his childhood in Bavaria up through his ascendancy
to the role of Leader in the NSDAP; Hitler circles around, forward and backward,
through his favorite topics. There’s little connection between paragraphs as he
lurches from one topic to another. There are few concrete images; Hitler liked universal
abstractions. Mixed metaphors abound.

Hitler’s writing is marginally better than the impenetrable diatribes of
Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, but only just.

And neither is the four star rating for the validity of his philosophy or
political program. Good God, no! It’s nothing but unrestrained egoism and hate
on every page. It is evil.

So why a four star rating?

Because it’s important. Mein Kampf needs to be read and to be understood in its
historical context so that we might never forget what has happened and so that
we can prevent it from happing again in our time.

Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies seems to be accurate: "As an online
discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or
Hitler approaches 1 —​that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or
scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or
something to Hitler or Nazism.”

Yet there are times when a comparison to Hitler or the Nazi party might be warranted,
might be helpful in better understanding our world. We need to have an accurate
understanding of the man and his party and his program if we’re going to make
comparisons to and contrasts with the people and events of our present reality.

I’d like to suggest that it should be read by everyone. I can’t imagine that it
will convince anyone to take up the vitriolic antisemitism of the Nazi party
(except those who are already filled with that hatred); the writing is
ploddingly dull. It’s not going to be convincing. So put it under the light.
Give it exposure so that we can all understand him, and better understand our
times as well.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to
ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would
fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no
more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” – Albert Camus “The
Myth of Sisyphus”

My first exposure to existential philosophy came not in the classroom, not in
the library, but on a movie screen; my teachers were not learned professors,
but the lovable oafs: Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy – better known
to the world as Laurel and Hardy. I may have been only 10 years old, but even
then I was beginning to understand that life is tragic and absurd, and that
that is beautiful.

Their 1932 film “The Music Box” (for which they won an Oscar) perfectly
captures the story the existential hero, Sisyphus - condemned to an eternity of
absurdity. It’s a simple story, one nearly as old as human history: the hero
must move a heavy object to the top of the hill, whereupon it immediately rolls
back down. Repeat ad infinitum, ad
absurdum.

We may laugh at the slapstick antics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, but it
should be a reverent laugh. Somewhere inside ourselves, we know that their struggle
is ours as well.

I was trapped, along with my teenage son and a dozen
strangers, during The Night of the Long Fires on the observation platform of
the Silway Tower. We had an excellent view of tragic violence, an aerial view
of the invasion. It wasn’t the street-level view of bloody individual deaths,
as recorded by television reporter (now reported missing) Clémence Grace, but
we wept as we watched the wave of fires wash over the city. We could not hear the screams of people, only
the gunfire and mortars and the explosions, the sirens of emergency vehicles
and the city’s rapid response alarm (which sounded, sadly, much too late to be
of any effect.)

The first clear and present omen of the coming conflagrations came early, around 4:30, as
the Silway Tower employees were beginning to usher us tourists toward the
elevator doors: an explosion at the power-plant, the first of many that rocked
us that evening. The tower sway, as is incorporated in its design – for nothing
can be completely rigid, there is no unmovable object- kept the building
intact, but unnerved us all. As high as we were, on the 71st floor,
three windows still shattered in that first blast. A woman from Texas, whose
name I never learned, screamed as the heavy glass panes splintered and cracked
and fell out into the streets far below. Cold lake wind rushed in. She
continued screaming through most of the night.

The Night of the Long Fires was the night that the Leader of
the Right Government™ took control of the city, the first of his outright
military victories. His followers wore the forbidden insignia, the illegal
cockades of red and black and blue. His troops were not a disciplined military,
but a band of militant thugs, and petty thieves, armed and angry. Heavily armed
and very angry.

We rushed for the elevators, but the power went out with the blast. In any
case, we decided that we might be safer atop the tower than in the streets
below. Fires were already blooming in the north and west quarters of the city.
We tried to call for help, but our cell phones were disrupted and land lines
nonfunctional. A portable radio left behind the desk by one of the tower
employees provided us with sporadic and contradictory news reports until 6:17
when the Leader’s troops took control of the airwaves and began broadcasting the
Leader’s now famous Fire Night Speech:

“I can speak with a thousand tongues and I am not changed. Not one iota. I
remain as I was. The traits of my character have not changed, and will not
change, not in a year, not in two thousand years. Our future is conditioned on fanaticism,
yes, intolerance. We must push past all other formations. Victory over
competitors.

“We are not professors, nor diplomats, nor auteurs, nor effeminate members of the intelligentsia,
nor diplomaed educrats, nor scholars with starched white collars, but an army
of sleepwalkers, telephone sanitizers, street cleaners, sewer sweepers, and
illiterate locksmiths. We are Die ursprüngliche
seele – the original souls – the ignorance battalions, and we have come for
the tapeworms and gravediggers who are responsible for our present
gastro-economic catastrophes. We will cleanse this city of all the short-headed
and pig-sighted big mouths and big-noises cowering in the back rooms of the
capitol.

“And when we have taken the city we will cite the value of
silence and praise the mouth of darkness! Let all those who want to live,
fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal, glorified
struggle, do not deserve to live.”

If Malcolm X can crib lines from Cole Porter then, I suppose, the Leader of the Right
Government™ can steal from Hitler. What’s to stop him? That message continued
to play, on repeat-over and again-all through the Night of the Long Fires. We
memorized it - unconsciously, unintentionally. The words burned into our brains
and the long fires destroyed the city.

By 9:10 they had reached the Armory – built like a bunker,
like a castle and crowded with Republican guards and Republican candidates. But
even that stronghold fell to the fires. Weapons, sabotage, interrogations, as
it was before, so it continues.

When the helicopters arrived, many bullets flew. But fire leaped and danced in the air and the
helicopters were brought down. Substitute Arizona for Iraq and Nevada for
Palestine; the city became like any other war-zone.

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The artwork and music published on this blog are copyright 2010 - 2018 by Thatjeffcarter was here. All rights reserved. But I could be persuaded to let you use them. Contact me for permissions. "The views, comments, statements and opinions expressed on this Web site do not necessarily represent the official position of The Salvation Army." I am no longer with the Salvation Army, anyway.